41–50 of 99 posts
If we could cure some aspects of aging without prolonging life, that seems like it would be an obvious and nearly indisputable good. I'd rather have 80 good years than 80 years of progressive decline.
The answer to the article's question is, of course, 'yes'.
We can't currently cure aging and there is little convincing evidence that suggests we will be able to anytime soon. This is despite the claims of many attempts at peddling false hopes by folks like David Sinclair and Aubrey de Grey. We can mitigate some downsides of aging at best. Aging is baked into our genes as natural selection never had a reason to favor any other approach.
We can't currently cure aging and there is little convincing evidence that suggests we will be able to anytime soon. This is despite the claims of many attempts at peddling false hopes by folks like David Sinclair and Aubrey de Grey. We can mitigate some downsides of aging at best. Aging is baked into our genes as natural selection never had a reason to favor any other approach.
yes. current medical science is having issues treating simple thing with humans (paralysis or any thing related to it ). solving aging, may be in next 500 years.
It could be just another track of medicine we haven't really begun to formalize correctly
While I don’t find the arguments in the article compelling (ie population increases are good as they lead to growth), enabling humans to live forever has a more dire consequence: an acceleration of the inequality gap. Death provides a natural mechanism to reset wealth and power. Without it, power will accumulate to those who already have it, forever.
> Death provides a natural mechanism to reset wealth and power. Have you heard of inheritance?
This has drastic effects on how large multi-generational fortunes are able to grow.
So yeah, death does have an effect on income inequality, as long as the fortunes are split up upon death.
The problems are way way more complex than most imagine:
Interestingly the people who say others should die to “fix” overpopulation change their minds when they’re up. We can solve overpopulation in other ways than letting people die.
Yes. No question. "Blah blah eternal life oligarchs or whatever" - who cares it's not like we don't have that problem now. Those people are powerful because we let them be, it's not innate. Maybe we might do something about the problem when there's a risk it'll last forever rather then pretending it's not a systemic failure. If it's possible to do, it's going to be done: the question is actually "should we let poor p…
Another angle: what's science going to be like when no-one ever retires from faculty positions?
While I don’t find the arguments in the article compelling (ie population increases are good as they lead to growth), enabling humans to live forever has a more dire consequence: an acceleration of the inequality gap. Death provides a natural mechanism to reset wealth and power. Without it, power will accumulate to those who already have it, forever.
> Death provides a natural mechanism to reset wealth and power. Have you heard of inheritance?
A powerful businessman living forever isn't the same thing as inheriting his son. Children rarely follow in the footsteps of their fathers. What if Warren buffet lived forever, for example? He's very good at saving money and investing. He'll eventually just have a large portion of the wealth that exists